Early call centers were structured around handling voice calls that may have been inbound, outbound, or combination of both. While voice calls are a common way of engaging customers, modern call centers now handle many other types of communication channels. For instance, many call centers can support various data oriented channels (i.e., non-voice) such as email, texts (SMS), social media, fax, and web-based chat. Accordingly, many call centers managing these additional channels have become to be referred to as “contact centers” to reflect that they support many different modes of engaging customers, as opposed to only handling voice calls.
Furthermore, many of today's agents are experienced in performing virtually simultaneous multiple tasks (“multi-tasking”), particularly when the tasks involve interacting with a computer. As a result, today's contact center agents are experienced in handling various channel types to engage customers at virtually the same time. For example, an agent may be able to engage in multiple simultaneous chat sessions with multiple customers or engage in a voice call with one customer while interacting with another customer via email or some other channel of communication.
With that said, these multiple communications the agent is engaged in at virtually the same time are completely separate and distinct communications from one another. For instance, when an agent is engaged in a voice call and a chat session at virtually the same time, the agent is engaging completely different parties on the ends of the communications. That is to say conventional contact centers do not easily allow an agent to engage a customer using multiple communication channels at virtually the same time. However, a need for such a capability exits. For example, an agent engaged in a voice call with a party may wish to send the party some information while still on the call. In this instance, it would be helpful if the agent were able to send the party the information using some other type of communication channel such as a text or email. In addition, it would be helpful in many instances if the multiple communication channels being used by the agent to engage the customer could be “linked” so that the contact center is aware that an agent is engaging with a single party by using the multiple communication channels. That way the contact center does not treat the multiple communication channels as separate and distinct communications and inadvertently assign one of the channels to a different agent. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure herein is presented.